At present, the problem of installing software (SW) on the computers of users may be solved in several ways. The first, for example, may be a manual installation of each distributive of software, but it has a number of drawbacks, one of which is the need for administrator rights, the possession of sufficient skill by the user, and a certain amount of time for the installation. In the context of a corporate network, such duties are performed by an administrator, which makes the manual approach to SW installation unacceptable given a large number of computers.
Other ways of installing SW may include the use of an image of the operating system with already installed applications, or the installing of the SW in automatic mode. The latter technique requires either an option in the application being installed in a silent or quiet mode, when the participation of the user is not required, or the use of special programs which dictate the actions of the user for their replication in the future. For example, the use of the program Auto Clicker Typer may make it possible to specify the pressing of certain buttons in a window (such as “Next >” or “Finish”).
However, in a number of cases the installation of SW in silent mode may not be available or it may be necessary during the installation to perform a number of actions that may involve the software and hardware of the computer (such as the required presence of a preinstalled .NET Framework package or a verification of the hardware support of the application functions). Yet another example of actions on the part of the user is the mandatory consent to the terms of the user agreement (End User License Agreement, or EULA). For example, there may be an approach to the installing of SW that takes into account errors as they arise (such as due to absence of consent to the EULA) with subsequent restarting of the installation process to work around them.
Although there may be a rather large number of tools for automating the installation of SW, they are all more or less based on the analysis of already existing applications and methods for their installation. When a new SW comes out, or installation procedure is changed, human involvement is needed to correct the automatic installation procedure. Thus, there is a need to create a solution that is able to carry out an automatic installation of any given SW without human involvement, regardless of the installation conditions.
Analysis of the related art leads to the conclusion that it is inefficient and in some cases impossible to use the prior technologies, whose drawbacks are remedied by the present invention, specifically, by a method of automating the process of installation of an application.